John Matisz, QMI Agency

To Matt Muszak, the man on the receiving end of a very public kiss rejection at the Air Canada Centre on Wednesday, it was a very forgettable moment.

To seemingly the rest of the western world? It was a denial for the ages.

Captured on TSN’s Game 5 broadcast of the Toronto Raptors-Brooklyn Nets playoff series, Muszak was seen lunging to his left to kiss the blonde girl beside him. Almost immediately after the panning shot appeared live on TV, it was repackaged as an animated GIF to play on loop for social media to devour.

And, boy, did it go viral in a hurry.

“To be honest, we don’t really remember it happening, you know what I mean?” Muszak told QMI Agency in a phone interview Thursday. “Until we left the Raptors game, of course, when our phones starting blowing up.”

What made the sequence so sharable online was the unintentionally blunt denial by his girlfriend of six months, Sandra.

With play stopped and 27 seconds left in the fourth quarter, the camera turned to the couple, who were sitting in Section 109, Row 7. Muszak, a 24-year-old Fanshawe College student from London, Ont., was simply trying to land a celebratory kiss.

But he missed the target -- Sandra's lips -- and Muszak, decked out in a ‘We The North’ t-shirt for the 115-113 Raptors win, hit nothing but cheek.

“It was never her intention to not kiss me. She thinks that she was talking and I just went in to kiss her, not let her finish her sentence, but it doesn’t look like that – that’s for sure,” Muszak said.

The public misplay of affection had enough legs to stay in the public eye for most of Thursday after being featured prominently on viral-friendly websites like Bleacher Report, Deadspin and USA Today’s sports blog For The Win.

The clip was even brought up on one of the most popular sports shows in the U.S., ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption.

“I’m pretty sure everyone’s seen the video. I’ve seen it everywhere,” he said, laughing.